Chapter 20: Experiments

Right as the sun rose, Tristan saw Layla staring at him with a mix of curiosity and concern.

"Brother," Layla touched him, trying to sense if something is wrong. "You look much paler than yesterday."

"..."

"Did something happen to you?"

"No, nothing... It's probably the sun" Tristan smiled as best as he could to ease her worries.

"I see." Unaware of his predicament, Layla returned the gesture with a sincere smile of her own.

Her smile only solidified Tristan's decision not to tell his sister about his blood-sucking predicament. On top of everything else going on, he just couldn't make her worry even more than she already did. Perhaps later, when he had more information about this, he would consider telling her.

"Alright..." Tristan stood up and stretched his limbs. "We really should get going now."

Tristan extended his hand and was about to grab his sister. However, before he had the chance to take her, Layla pleaded and asked with resignation in her eyes.

"Do we still need to rush even now...? From what I see, I don't think they're still chasing us. Besides, look." Layla gestured at everything around them. "Now that we aren't running for our lives, somehow this trip feels like a picnic, hehe." Layla scratched the back of her head and laughed.

Perhaps, if Layla said that yesterday, Tristan would be more inclined to go along with that plan. However, the notification about his need for blood threw that plan out of the window. In order to know more about this world, he couldn't relax, he has to find out a solution to combat his need for blood.

Unfortunately for him, the forest is much bigger than he previously thought. He had been running for two days, and there were only a sea of trees as far as the eyes could see.

They continued their journey for a while before taking a short break for food. He left Layla in the safest spot he could find before telling her that he'll hunt for animals. On one hand, he really did want to hunt, but on the other hand, he was looking for a chance to try out his skill on the animals.

He searched for a while until he found a massive, fierce looking boar walking past him. Upon spotting him, the boar turned to look at him and showed off its tusks in a threatening stance. Unperturbed, Tristan was able to kill it, and he decided to use his skill on the fresh bleeding corpse.

[Blood Extraction]

He had used the skill before, but this was the first time he saw how the skill really worked. The fresh blood pooling from the dead boar's blood was turned into an opaque red mist. The mist floated towards him before his skin absorbed it.

[10 low quality blood cells are found]

[Extracting and filtering blood cells]

[1 blood essence ]

Upon seeing the low number, Tristan was a bit disappointed, but deep down he knew better than to expect a boar would be enough to nourish him. Looking at the bright side, at least his ability still allowed him to absorb blood from an animal, and killing humans was not the only solution.

Tristam decided to hunt a few more animals and get more practice on the skill

[5 Blood Essence]

Even with all the time he spent hunting, Tristan showed no sign of returning back into his previous self. He was even scolded by his sister as he brought back too many animals to eat.

They cooked the animal over a campfire before resting on the forest floor. Morning came in what felt like an instant, and Tristan checked his body, realizing that the five blood essence he so painstakingly obtained is already consumed by his body.

He concludes a few things from his experiments

First; it was not feasible to nourish his body using blood from normal animals considering the amount and quality of blood he needed daily just to function properly.

Second, the system doesn't show or explain it but his body still needed to consume blood essence constantly. If he left his blood essence at 0 for too long, he believed that something bad would eventually happen.

Third, only fresh blood could be extracted and used by him. He had tried to obtain energy by extracting from an overnight boar corpse and as expected, he failed.

Considering all the limitations for his extraction, it seems killing humans had just returned back on the list of options he had

The next day came as quickly as it went, and the two siblings finally managed to walk out of the massive forest. On the other side from where they came, there was a massive dry desert, but in the place they arrived, they saw lush greenery coupled with hills and rivers.

They trekked for another day, and finally, they saw a small town protected with a wooden palisade all around it. Several guards donning some kind of brown-colored leather armor were walking together to ensure the safety of the place. From afar it looks like any normal human town in medieval time.

There is a bit of traffic heading in and going out of town. From the way it looks, the inhabitants look kinda welcoming. Tristan decided to risk it and walked towards the gate.

With his cloak, he covered the tips of his ears. Now, he could only hope that no one would know he was an elf. He doesn't know how humans would interact with elves in this world.

Unfortunately, before they managed to get closer, a guard had spotted them and called on them

"halt! you there!"